If you walked on to one of the many CES show floors last week, you probably realized that wearables are quickly taking over the tech industry. From Swarovski-encrusted activity trackers to GPS-enabled footwear, there's a growing contingent in the tech world to quantify every aspect of our lives or have data to back up every moment.
Of course, this is technically nothing new. With the help of our smartphones, social media somewhat does this for us already. Tweets are timestamped so you can look back and see when you told the world your thoughts about Guardians of the Galaxy. Foursquare keeps track of all of the restaurants you visited on your latest trip to London. Instagram captures the scene at your university's bowl game victory.
And now wearables are attempting to quantify not only what we do but who we are as people. Activity trackers have been around for a while, but they're starting to really saturate the market with the capability to track your steps, count your calories and monitor how far you run every day. Many of them can also tell you how much sleep you get each night.
But other kinds of wearables are starting to emerge that not only give us data about ourselves but also attempt to provide meaning to that data. This is one of the things out of CES that I found most interesting and powerful.
My main problem with wearables has always been that just because we have a way to quantify something doesn't make it matter to our lives, a subject touched upon by Shawn Dubravac, the chief economist and director of research for the Consumer Electronics Association, in his talk about trends to pay attention to during CES this year.
For instance, the concept of a sleep tracker just boggles my mind. If it tells you the quality of your sleep is poor, it's not like you're going to all of a sudden get more sleep, because you probably already know that. You can feel that, for one thing. Maybe there's a chance that you will take this information and seek medical help to see if you have a sleeping problem, but on the whole, I don't think that type of number tells you anything very meaningful.
However, I saw an interesting trend at CES this year of new wearables that not only provide numbers but that also provide experiences. This is where I think wearables are and should be headed in the future. They need to provide meaningful data and, well, meaning to our lives.
One of the most fascinating wearables I saw at CES was Muse, a Bluetooth-enabled headband that connects to your smartphone to coach you through exercises that help relieve stress and focus your mind on what's important. Like most activity trackers, you'll get a number describing your brain activity at the end of every session, which you can track over time. But the great thing about Muse is that it actually tells you how to improve instead of leaving you to figure it out on your own. And as you do improve, you strengthen your attention, which helps you focus on what's important, ultimately giving you the ability to enjoy life more.
The Shell from Bellabeat is also all about enjoying life's experiences, specifically the joy of birth. It's not technically a wearable — more like a "holdable" — but it works in a similar fashion as one. The Shell is an activity tracker for your baby before and after she or he is born. A mother can hold the Shell on her stomach to track the baby's heartbeat and play music for the baby in her womb. Once the baby is born, parents can also use the Shell to monitor the baby's crying, sleep and the temperature in the room. All the while, you can record the baby's heartbeat and track his or her kicks in the Shell app as a way to preserve your child's earliest moments.
The Narrative Clip 2 is a wearable that's all about creating moments. It's a small camera that attaches to your clothing and takes a photo every 30 seconds so you can spend less time on your smartphone and more time enjoying what's actually happening in front of you.
Hitting an emotional cord, as these wearables and others do, might also be a way to make wearables more appealing to women going forward, beyond just making it look like a BeDazzler threw up on them. Many women want their wearables to be sleek and stylish, but they also want them to fit into their lives and make their life easier and more enjoyable. For anyone wanting to know how to get more women to use wearables, establishing an emotional connection may be it.
I think these wearables and others like them will be successful in the future because they solve a complaint that many people have with technology today, the fact that it takes you out of the moment and into staring at a screen. But technology is only going to become more and more present in our lives. The trick is to not let technology overrun it but to use it to bring moments to life again and again.
